There are many areas in the desert where drinkable water lies within a
few feet of the surface, indicated by the mesquite and the bunch grass
_(Sporobolus airoides)._ It is this nearness of unimagined help that
makes the tragedy of desert deaths. It is related that the final
breakdown of that hapless party that gave Death Valley its forbidding
name occurred in a locality where shallow wells would have saved them.
But how were they to know that? Properly equipped it is possible to go
safely across that ghastly sink, yet every year it takes its toll of
death, and yet men find there sun-dried mummies, of whom no trace or
recollection is preserved. To underestimate one's thirst, to pass a
given landmark to the right or left, to find a dry spring where one
looked for running water--there is no help for any of these things.

Along springs and sunken watercourses one is surprised to find such
water-loving plants as grow widely in moist ground, but the true desert
breeds its own kind, each in its particular habitat. The angle of the
slope, the frontage of a hill, the structure of the soil determines the
plant. South-looking hills are nearly bare, and the lower tree-line
higher here by a thousand feet. Cañons running east and west will have
one wall naked and one clothed. Around dry lakes and marshes the herbage
preserves a set and orderly arrangement. Most species have well-defined
areas of growth, the best index the voiceless land can give the traveler
of his whereabouts.

If you have any doubt about it, know that the desert begins with the
creosote. This immortal shrub spreads down into Death Valley and up to
the lower timber-line, odorous and medicinal as you might guess from the
name, wandlike, with shining fretted foliage. Its vivid green is
grateful to the eye in a wilderness of gray and greenish white shrubs.
In the spring it exudes a resinous gum which the Indians of those parts